Salt Water

"The cure for anything is salt water – sweat, tears, or the sea."
—Isak Dinesen

It is times like this that I dream of the sea. Always the sea. Waves lap at my ankles, slap up against my calves, and I am knee deep, waist deep, chin high, fighting the current with every ounce of strength I have left. I go under, each wave pushing me further down into murky water, into fragmented sound and countless unknowns. It is then that I am suddenly awake in my bed, gasping for breath, the taste of the sea still fresh in my mouth. I fight it, always I fight it, but sometimes I wonder why I do not let it take me.

I have been absent from here lately. It has been easier to stay quiet, to spare the unpleasant, to not admit defeat. It is only now that I feel I can finally do so.

The past three years have been a blur of car wrecks, of needles and physical therapy; of picking up the pieces and having them crash down one by one, again and again, da capo al fine; of unrelenting pain that stays with me daily and seeps into my dreams at night. Three years of salt water – of sweat and tears and fighting the sea.

Each day is a new challenge. I now have disabilities that limit the type and duration of work I can perform and the career I went to college to accomplish is no longer an option. I am now doing temp work and exploring other options, but it’s not easy.

It is after the third car wreck that I have come to terms with the fact that this is permanent and degenerative. It is something that I had been told countless times before, but blocked out of my mind because the mere thought of it terrified me. During the last round of physical therapy, they told me again, “This is how it’s always going to be. Your injuries and your pain have been with you so long that you’re not going to get better. Stop trying to fight it, stop trying to make it go away, because it won’t. Find a way to live with it.” I ignored it, shunned pity and carried on. I kept fighting it just as I think anyone would. But slowly I have lost the ability to do many of the things that I once loved, as well as the ability to do many routine tasks with ease (or at all). And there are so many things in life that I have not yet done, so many things that I had to put aside in order to recover (three times over). A career and a family, namely. Accepting all of this has been a process. It’s not something that is cut and dry – there is a ripple effect, a whirl of chaos, of sweat and tears left in the wake.

Still, I believe that some day life will be better, that opportunities will come, and that my dreams of the sea will be as they once were: fishing on a small wooden boat in smooth glassy water with solid land to return to, an endless horizon in front of me, and a sunset to paint my own.